Give me three or four jerky frames a minute of The Mighty Hercules
over the steroid-bloated, effeminate Disney clown any day.

Great site, keep it up!
- Steve

Thank you for printing the lyrics to the Hercules theme. My brothers
and I used to watch it everyday after school. It was shown as one of
the segments on a local kid's program called "Johnny's Follies" on WVUE
in New Orleans.

I didn't think anybody else remembered this cartoon until I heard it
mentioned on the Canadian comedy series, "The Kids in The Hall." During
a monologue about gay couples by Buddy (Scott Thompson), the last pairing
he mentions is "Hercules and Newt." When the audience laughed, I knew
even people in Toronto were familiar with the show.

- David Bush

When I was a kid, Mighty Hercules used to play on a show called "Boomtown"
starring Rex Trailer, which was a western-type kid's show. My sister
and I used to love that cartoon and would play-act it all the time.
Now, some 30 years later, it was always lingering in the back of my
mind, when I happened to pick up a toy selling newspaper and the Mighty
Hercules board game was being auctioned off for a minimum bid of $650!!
So much for that . . .

- Ken Paruti

Materials on this page
were provided for you
by Ken Paruti.

Thanks Ken!

My first experience with Hercules was as an oft-stoned college student
in Dallas in the mid-1980s. Channel 27 had a Felix
the Cat / Mighty Hercules hour, which fit in nicely with my
strict regimen of blowing off classes while watching mindless television.
Of course, the best thing about it is the utter cheesiness. This was
lost on my girlfriend, who thought I was just sitting around watching
stupid cartoons, when in fact I was, um, well, OK, that's what I was
doing. But still. Hercules was the beginning of the end for that relationship,
but even though she still doesn't get it, we remain friends to this
day.

- W. Evans

The
original Mighty Hercules show was a popular staple in the lunchtime
line-up of Montreal's CFCF-12 station in the early-mid 70s. A single
5-minute Herc segment was shown each weekday at 12:00 noon just before
The Flintstones. I suppose one of the reasons for its popularity was
the fact that local Montreal TV & radio personality Jimmy Tapp provided
the voice of Hercules himself! Knowing that Mr.Tapp was about as far
removed in real life from the character of Herc only added to the charm
of the show. :)

Around 1976, the series disappeared entirely from the airwaves in Montreal
and wasn't seen again until channel 12 dug out the grainy old prints
and ran them at 6:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings in 1992.

Thankfully, a company called "Alan Enterprises" bought the series shortly
thereafter and re-syndicated it with crisp, clean new prints. Herc never
looked so good! YTV (Canada's national cartoon cable network) picked
up the series aound 1994-95 and broadcast it from coast-to-coast for
the first time in nearly 20 years which gave me a chance to re-live
some truly wonderful childhood memories.

I
have an obscure one for you. It may not have been a "show" in itself,
but it was at least a serial cartoon, with an episode played daily on
a kids' after-school lineup. It was called "Hercules" and was pretty
low-budget animation. Hercules had a sidekick whom I remember as a faun
or satyr, but one of the other two people I know who remembers the cartoon
swears it was a centaur named "Newton". This character said everything
twice, the most frequent phrase being, "Right, Herc!, Right, Herc!"
This has been impossible to forget for all three of us.

The
main bad guy was Daedalus, who was always inventing dastardly machines
and schemes. There was also a female romantic interest whom none of
us can remember (Helena) other than that she was blonde and very
sweet.

The whole
thing was quite ancient-Greek looking, and drew from mythology for many
of the other characters. I was watching it around 1964-66, and my friends
remember it being sometime between 1963 and 1967. Two of us saw it in
the Washington D.C. area, the other in north central Connecticut.

The
best thing about "Hercules" was the theme song, which had a lovely and
heroic melody:

Hercules,
hero of song and story
Hercules,
winner of ancient glory
fighting for the right
fighting with his might
with the strength of ten
ordinary men
Hercules,
people are safe when near him
Hercules,
only the evil fear him
softness in his eyes
iron in his thighs
virtue in his heart
fire in every part
of the mighty
Hercules!

God
help us, we can still sing it with gusto and goosebumps. Does anybody
else on the planet remember this cartoon? Dare I hope we could find
it on video cassette to show our eye-rolling offspring? With all the
hullabaloo about the Disney movie, and references to the more recent
cartoon Hercules, this one is a needle-in-the-haystack to search for
on the web.

Clearly
you are wise and well-connected. Please help. Thanks!

- Ann

Thanks
for the memories, Ann.

To
call this cartoon series 'limited animation' is stretching even that
broadly defined term. The animation on The
Mighty Hercules produced by Adventure Cartoon Productions in
association with Trans-Lux, was only a step above those toy TVs with
the record player on top that you slid the filmstrips through. Whole
conversations would take place with only three or four frames changing,
and it would be the same sequence you saw time and time again.

That little
gnome used to drive me crazy repeating everything with that high-pitched
annoying yelp. He screamed "Herc! Herc!" as often as officer Tootie
said "Ooh! Ooh!" on 'Car 54, Where are you?'. But I was compelled to
keep watching, I don't know why.

'The
Mighty Hercules' premiered in syndication in September 1963 and was
available as a half-hour show, or as five minute segments that could
be run during local kid's shows. Watching the episodes one after the
other in a half hour block was pure sensory torture. The episodes were
written by George Kashdan and Jack E. Miller, two former editors/writers
at DC comics where Superman comics were published.

'The
Mighty Hercules' was a lot like the old Superman comics - Herc's girlfriend
Helena (Lois Lane) and his dorky pal Newton (Jimmy Olsen) were always
getting into trouble and Hercules has to step in and save the day.

Like another
DC character (Green Lantern), Hercules derives his strength from a ring
given to him by his father Zeus. Because of the five minute running
time, there wasn't room for a lot of character development, another
similarity to the Sixties' Superman.

Hercules
couldn't fly, so at the end of each
segment he was usually shown running off into the distance or
jumping off a cliff, shouting his trademark "Olympia!"

Someone told me, though it may have been a joke, that Disney
would have given the green light to their 'Hercules' movie a decade
ago, but they were waiting for this cartoon to fade from the public
memory.

And it
did, Ann, until you brought it up again. I afraid you'll be hearing
from Disney's lawyers!

"Now
come on and admit that when you were in 4th and 5th grade that old Hercules
was pretty cool stuff, for me it was 1965-66.

"Then
in about 1975 it was rerun on KHJ channel 9 in Los Angeles before the
birth of my oldest son. He would wake up early, and I would watch it
and reminisce about my childhood. I have been looking for Hercules on
videos and on cartoon shows for years. Besides, do you remember that
Johnny Nash sang the '70s hit I Can See Clearly Now?

-
Linda Collins

"Why
hasn't anyone mentioned the all-but-obvious homosexual subtext to the
original animated Hercules?

"From
the Johnny Mathis-style rendering of the very gay theme song ("softness
in his eyes/iron in his thighs), to the musclebound but hairless Hercules
- this had to be a huge inspiration to Saturday Night Live's Ambiguously
Gay Duo.

"I
remember watching Hercules as a kid on Johnny's Follies on WVUE in New
Orleans and being somewhat disturbed by the whole thing - even at that
young age I could tell something was different about this cartoon.

"I
remember one episode where the Prince was dying and one of the physicians
said that only the fruit of the lotus could save him, and the other
physician said something like "Where can that fruit be?" and then it
cuts to Hercules walking along with Newt.

"The
people writing this show had to know what they were saying. Next time
you get a chance to see Hercules watch closely."

- M.O.T.O.

"I
used to love that cartoon !

"I
was in nursery school at the time, growing up in Connecticut. I loved
to watch it while eating a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of soup
(Liptons - umm umm good!)

"I
worshipped Hercules so much that I named my new pet Guinea Pig after
him! My mom also brought home a female G.P to keep "Herc" company, I
named her "Sharon". They made a lovely couple. Well, Hercules the Guinea
Pig also "had the strength of ten, ordinary men" too, and apparently
the labido to match, because he spent more time on top of Sharon than
I spent watching teevee! My parents would sheepishly skirt the subject
when I asked what they were doing.

"Anyway,
good old Hercules eventually loved poor Sharon to death, she died from
too much of Hercules's lovin'. Poor Hercules missed his wife so much
that he too died within a month of his dearly departed.